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Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

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Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#221

Post by rbanffy »

jrockway wrote: post #199
miohtama wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game performance is often GPU bound, not CPU bound.

It depends on the game. If there are a lot of game simulation calculations to do for every frame, then you're going to be CPU constrained. If it's a storybook that you're walking through and every pixel is raytraced using tons of 8000x8000 texture maps, then it's going to be GPU constrained. Most games are combinations of the two, and so some people are going to be CPU limited and some people are going to be GPU limi…

> If there are a lot of game simulation calculations

Why not move at least some of that into the GPU as well? Lots of different branchy code paths for the in-game objects?

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#222

Post by gigel82 »

Was this verified independently? Because people can submit all sorts of results for Geekbench scores. Look at all these top scorers (most of which are obviously fake or overclocked chips): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/singlecore

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#224

Post by zjp »

thfuran wrote: post #216
philistine wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive a…

In the 90s, you probably wouldn't want to be using a desktop from 4 years ago, but the M1 is already 4 years old and will probably be fine for most people for years yet.

No kidding. The M1 MacBook Pro I got from work is the first time I've ever subjectively considered a computer to be just as fast as it was the day I got it.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#225

Post by SushiHippie »

whalesalad wrote: post #113

Wild. It absolutely shits on my 13900K - https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/7692643?baselin...

Same, I have a Ryzen 9 7950X and it has 130-140% better performance (according to Geekbench)

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8593555?baselin...

Though a MacBook Pro 16" with M4 Max(that's what achieved this geekbench score), but the same amount of memory (64GB) and the same amount of storage (4TB) as my PC, would cost 6079€. That is roughly twice as much as my whole PC Build did cost, and I'm able to expand Storage and upgrade my CPU and GPU in the future (for way less than buying a new Mac in a few years)

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#226

Post by rbanffy »

trynumber9 wrote: post #173
carlgreene wrote: post #5

I have been out of the PC world for a long time, but in terms of performance efficiency, is Apple running away from the competition? Or are AMD and Intel producing similar performing chips at the same wattage?

Apple is slightly pulling away. AMD's top desktop chips were on par with M1/M2/M3 1T but now they cannot match even M4 despite releasing a new design (Zen 5) this year. It's partially because AMD is on a two year cadence while Apple is on approximately a yearly cadence. And AMD has no plans to increase the cadence of their Zen releases. 2020 - M1, Zen 3 2021 - ... 2022 - M2, Zen 4 2023 - M3 2024 - M4, Zen 5 Edit: I a…

> Edit: I am looking at peak 1T performance, not efficiency. In that regard I don't think anyone has been close.

Indeed. Anything that approaches Apple performance does so at a much higher power consumption. Which is no biggie for a large-ish desktop (I often recommend getting middle-of-the-road tower servers for workstations).

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#227

Post by [deleted] »

philistine wrote: post #126
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a M1 Macbook Air there's a very good reason you've never heard a fan! Blows my mind how it doesn't even have a fan and is still rarely even anything above body temperature. My 2015 MBP was still going strong for work when I bailed on it late last year but the transition purely on the heat/sound emitted has been colossal.

Factorio: Space Age is the first piece of software that my M1 shows performance issues with. I'm not building xCode projects or anything, but it is a great Mac. Maybe even the greatest.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#228

Post by mistrial9 »

_hyn3 wrote: post #73
cloudking wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M3 Pro user here, agree with the same points. It's nice to be able to actually have your laptop on your lap, without burning your legs.

ARM processors have always been good at handling heat and low power (like AWS Graviton), but what laptop did you have before that would overheat that much during normal usage? That seems like a very poor design.

anything that pegged the CPU for extended periods of time, caused many Apple laptop models to overheat. There is some design tradeoff about power specs, cooling, "typical workloads" and other things.. A common and not-new example of heat-death-workload was video editing..

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#229

Post by magicalhippo »

jrockway wrote: post #199
miohtama wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game performance is often GPU bound, not CPU bound.

It depends on the game. If there are a lot of game simulation calculations to do for every frame, then you're going to be CPU constrained. If it's a storybook that you're walking through and every pixel is raytraced using tons of 8000x8000 texture maps, then it's going to be GPU constrained. Most games are combinations of the two, and so some people are going to be CPU limited and some people are going to be GPU limi…

I recently swapped out my AMD 3800X with a 5900X as an alternative to a full platform upgrade. I got it mostly for non-gaming workloads, however I do enjoy games.

Paired with my aging but still chugging 2080Ti, the max framerates in games I play did not significantly increase.

However I did get a significant improvement in 99-percentile framerate, and the games feel much smoother. YMMV, but it surprised me a bit.

Re: Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing

#230

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

llm_nerd wrote: post #152
eigenspace wrote: post #4

I'll admit to some reflexive skepticism here. I know GeekBench at least used to be considered an entirely unserious indicator of performance and any discussion relating to its scores used to be drowned out by people explaining why it was so bad. Do those criticisms still hold? Are serious people nowadays taking Geekbench to be a reasonably okay (though obviously imperfect) performance metric?

Geekbench is an excellent benchmark, and has a pretty good correlation with the performance people see in the real world where there aren't other limitations like storage speed. There is a sort of whack-a-mole thing where adherents of particular makers or even instruction sets dismiss evidence that benefits their alternatives, and you find that at the root of almost all of the "my choice doesn't win in a given benchm…

Any proprietary benchmark that's compiled with the mystery meat equivalent of compiler/flags isn't "excellent" in any way.

SPECint compiled with either the vendor compiler (ICC, AOCC) or the latest gcc/clang would be a good neutral standard, though I'd also want to compare SIMD units more closely with x265 and Highway based stuff (vips, libjxl).

And how do you handle the fact that you can't really (yet) use the same OS for both platforms? Scheduler and power management counts, even for dumb number crunching.

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